Can a healthy gut be the fountain of youth? Without proper digestion, the body, the mind, and the soul age. Follow along as I share with you some of my anti-aging tips from my Doctor Lynn’s Anti-Aging Yoga Dance online class.
Everyone is looking for that magical elixir of eternal youth. Nobody I know wants to grow old, lose his or her youthful looks, and experience decline. There are thousands of anti-aging creams, pills, injections, and products that promise everlasting youth, but none that get to the heart of anti-aging.
Aging is inevitable. It’s what we do along the way that determines the state of our being in body, mind, and soul.
Successful aging
Anti-aging has also been called successful aging. The McArthur study on aging defined successful aging as having three criteria:
- freedom from disease and disability
- high cognitive and physical functioning
- active engagement with life.
But we need to be cautious with this definition because someone can have a disease or disability and still be highly cognitive and actively engaged in life. I have had clients who had heart problems, arthritis, and cancer who were quick-witted and fully participating in life. But ill health can surely make the aging process a challenge.
Bernard Mannes Baruch an American financier and statesman, said,
To me old age is always 15 years older than I am.
Simply said, it attests to the old adage that age is just a number and that our attitude plays a significant part in how we age.
The Greek philosopher Plato viewed successful aging through spirituality. He wrote:
The spiritual eyesight improves as the physical eyesight declines.
From the moment we are born, we begin to age. Each decade brings its own challenges and changes. But one thing we could not dispute wherever you are along the continuum, quality of life is paramount.
The American Council on Exercise defines the quality of life as overall positive feelings and enthusiasm for life without fatigue from routine activities, and although this may be a general definition without a positive and enthusiastic feeling for life, and without the vitality to perform even the most basic activities life loses its quality.
Body, mind, soul balance
As a naturopath, my philosophy is that if we have perfect balance in body, the mind, and soul, we have perfect health. We cannot treat one without addressing all three. So, as it is with health, it is with aging.
Basically, anti-aging simply means to prevent or act against the effects of aging.
Some effects of aging are:
- loss of muscle mass
- loss of elasticity
- loss of bone strength
- cognitive decline
- general overall loss of energy and dive
Although these are only a few parts of the aging process, we cannot deny that the body and the mind like everything in life age, but we can slow the effect by taking action against the inevitable.
Karma would remind us that the cause of aging is the passage of time and the effect is all in what we do with it.
You are what you think, say, and do.
Effects of stress
Stress is one of the major factors contributing to the aging process. When we think of stress, we often think of the pressure to get things done. But stress is also a normal part of the aging process. Every day the body combats stress as a normal part of cellular regeneration.
Your immune system is constantly fighting off the effects of stress. Add the outside stressors of the world and we begin to accelerate aging. Our cells under excess stress may stop regenerating as quickly as normal and become more prone to disease and early cell death. Therefore, it behooves all of us to mitigate stress in favor of more positive actions.
The average person experiences about 50 stress responses on any given day. These can range from not getting up on time, traffic, or an all-out fight with a friend or family member. Without giving ourselves time to rest and relax between stressors, the body and mind have no time to recover and so we age faster.
Certainly, there are things in our lives that create and warrant stress and worry. Health problems, divorce, a death, losing a job, financial strain, and family issues can all cause us to be stressed and overloaded with worry.
Times like these are when we need to take extra care of ourselves, keeping ever mindful of the long-term effects of stress, aging, and decline. But it’s not always the heavy issues of life that wear us down. Sometimes it’s the little things that we let get to us. The “small stuff” has a way of becoming way too burdensome if we let it.
It is the little things that fret and worry us; you can dodge an elephant but not a fly.
– Josh Billings
Over the next few weeks, I will share with you different lessons I teach in my Doctor Lynn’s Anti-Aging class. http://www.doctorlynn.com
Each week we focus and work on something that reminds us to be appreciative of where we are in our lives and to remember that the most important thing is our health. Without it, all else is meaningless.
As we age, we need to constantly be willing to adjust and embrace with a positive attitude the wonderful things that come with maturing and living a full life, because we all desire quality of life in body, mind, and soul, and that is one of the secrets to successful anti-aging.
Catch my next blog, “Can your digestion age you?”
Doctor Lynn
For a free yoga dance class [email protected]
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Dr. Anderson holds a Ph.D. in Natural Health and an N.D. with an emphasis in Aromatherapy, herbology, and nutrition. She is a Certified Yoga Therapist and an adjunct Professor at LMU. She is a published author, has appeared on numerous radio shows and TV networks.
